The Benefits of Three-Second Bicep Exercises

Introduction

The bicep curl isn’t the only way to strengthen your arm muscles, as a recent study showed an effective alternative technique that produces results in as little as three seconds of exercise three times a week.

Short Workouts for Stronger Muscles

This includes just 36 seconds of weight work for a month, according to a team from Edith Cowan University in Australia in collaboration with institutions in Japan.

The study is small but confirms previous findings that eccentric muscle stretching can strengthen fibrous tissue more effectively than concentric procedures that shorten muscles.

Previous research has shown that a small amount of weight training aimed at stretching the muscles is a much more effective technique.

In other words, lifting heavy dumbbells from the waist to the chest may not be as beneficial for muscle training as the reverse movement. It certainly burns more calories, but the alternative strengthens muscles more and also causes brain changes associated with greater muscle response.

The Experiment

In the current experiment, 26 healthy adults were divided into two groups.

One group did three-second bicep exercises twice a week. The other group did the same exercises three times a week.

Four weeks later, the researchers compared the force generated by the ulnar muscles and the thickness of the biceps brachii.

These results were then compared to an earlier study by some of the same researchers in which participants performed similar exercises five days a week.

In this previous study, 3-second exercises that lengthened arm muscles produced better results compared to those that shortened them.

After a minute of cumulative exercise over four weeks, participants in the eccentric training group improved their muscle strength by 11.5%.

“We haven’t explored other muscles yet, but if we find that the three-second rule applies to other muscles as well, you can complete a full-body exercise in less than 30 seconds,” said sports scientist Ken Kazunori Nosaka. in 2022.

Impressive Results

To be clear, these short workouts probably don’t improve cardiovascular performance, only muscle strength.

However, current research suggests that these three-second bicep contractions can lead to impressive physical results in just three exercises per week.

After four weeks, participants who trained three times per week averaged an increase in focused strength of 2.5% and eccentric strength of 3.9%.

“Our previous work has shown that regular shorter workouts are more beneficial than one or two large workouts per week. We now have a clearer picture of the tipping point where you start to see meaningful benefits from such simple exercises,” explains Nosaka.

Conclusion

More research is needed to extract the details, but it’s possible that exercise frequency is more important than actual exercise duration.

The study was published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology.

Source: Science Alert